Readers’ gardens
Reduce, reuse, recycle, re-love!
I’m not perfect, but as a gardener, I do my best to take care of the environment. By using every opportunity to garden responsibly, we can limit our use of new plastic and chemicals, reuse materials in ingenious ways and recycle well. Many plastic or cardboard packets can be used to keep seed in and growing our own
produce and making compost (like our parents and grandparents did), is surely the way forward.
At the allotment, there’s a lot of recycling. Our new raised beds are made from tired scaffolding boards, which our builder no longer wanted, plus an old sandpit frame. Plants inside are protected with old wire hoops covered in a patchwork of reused netting, pegged on top.
Our potatoes are planted in broken trugs (they make fabulous large planting pots with drainage holes drilled in the bottom) and old jute shopping bags. Hanging baskets that are bent or broken make excellent plant protectors, placed over young courgette plants or other seedlings, and you can put a piece of netting on top for extra protection. Holey wellies become amusing planters that the children love.
I’ve been astounded at how much produce we’ve had already from our two new raised beds. We’ve had plenty of salad leaves, kale, spinach and radish. Everything else is growing brilliantly, with baby carrots and beetroot nearing harvest, plus broad beans in flower. Parsnips, peas and flowers are all developing with gusto. In the larger bed, the sweetcorn and courgettes are coming on with onions, potatoes and strawberries.
My husband and I went to our first Chelsea Flower Show and I loved the combination of purple and orange seen in several show gardens and will seek out the deep purple poppy, lupin ‘Masterpiece’ and geum ‘Tangerine Dream’, plus the acers ‘Orange Dream’ with ‘Black Lace’, to recreate these partnerships.
And it was such a highlight to meet GN’s own Medwyn Williams. I bought his ‘Y Ddraig Goch' F1 (red dragon) tomato seeds and planted them straight away. They’ve got some way to go to catch the ‘Gardener's Delight’ I sowed in March, but I think (being Welsh myself) they’re going to be the best tomatoes I’ve ever eaten!